Forgive my sporadic and infrequent blogging. I don’t seem to manage much more than life and sleep these days. The summer has been crazy-busy, hectic, intense and both wonderfully and terribly tiring.
Two weeks ago the book of Acts in Lubwisi was dedicated. Our people group’s language, Lubwisi, only recently became a written language through the work of a group of SIL missionaries. After turning an oral language into a written one, they began the work of training translators and literacy workers and beginning to translate and publish the Bible into the heart language of the Babwisi people. Living here among them I can see what value this project has, not just to provide access to Lubwisi Bibles but to evidence to the people that God loves and cares about them uniquely. Imagine being taught to read in your own language for the very first time. Imagine hearing God’s word in your first language and being blown away by what God is actually saying. The Bible translation project is simply cool at every level. I’m so thankful for our great Ugandan team on-site, in fact right in my front yard! They are continuing to translate and SIL is continuing to look for funding to provide for publication of these books of the Bible. So far Jonah, Mark and Acts have been published. We had a day long celebration complete with many speeches, music, dancing and food.
This last week the new Maternity and Pediatric Ward opened in Nyahuka, our little town. Scott has put in an incredible amount of time and energy on this project in the last year. It’s an incredible improvement for the community and hopefully will drastically increase the number of women who choose a hospital birth over a home birth. Sunday night we met as a team along with staff from the health center (Scott and Jennifer have chosen to partner with the Ugandan government health system rather than establish a separate mission program - for sustainability reasons) to pray over each room of the new building. We cried as we prayed for people to feel the love and compassion of Jesus and experience his healing touch. Bundibugyo has one of the highest rates of sickle cell in the world, along with high rates of malaria, cholera, meninghitus, and HIV/AIDS. The next morning we again began celebrating for a full day. The American Ambassador to Uganda flew into our airstrip to cut the ribbon and be our V.I.P. - a big deal to the local people and also to us. Two schools sang, two drama groups performed and there were numerous speeches by dignitaries of all types. It was a real memorial of a day - full of praises for WHM and Scott and Jennifer. It left us all feeling dramatically encouraged by what God is doing here through us.
In other miscellaneous news from the last week or two; Pat, one of our longest term team members (14 years), returned from six months in the States. We got to host a team from David’s former university for a night and a day - feeding, sleeping and moving around a team of 16 is a lot of work here! Our interns are wrapping up their time in the next week and a half. We are all participating in about 6 team birthdays over this month - with just us to celebrate we all join in to find big and small ways to make the day special for each person. Christ School continues to heal and grow.